I knew this moment would come but I did not know it would come so soon. 

So this is where I got kinda lost. 

The recipe itself was super simple but the whole time I was asking myself, 'am I doing this right?'.

This dish has a very creamy texture and honestly I think it's better paired up with other lighter dish as it can feel very heavy. My husband loved it but personally, I would've liked this more if there was less sour cream and more Cream of Chicken. Oh, speaking of, I have never heard of cream of chicken until I saw this recipe. I just could not picture what on earth could be cream of a chicken and more I imagined about it, worse it got. When I actually picked up the product, (to my relief) it did not look anything like what I had imagined but much like a pumpkin soup with a wrong label.

Enough intro said, now let's check out the ingredients. 

According to the recipe there are only 5 ingredients for this dish; 

1 can Cream of Chicken

8 oz Sour Cream

3 cups Cooked Chicken 

1 Ritz cracker

1 stick of butter

The alternation I made was to replace cooked chicken with 2 cans of Chicken Breast and Ritz cracker with some leftover pita chips and I halved the butter. After all I think these changes didn't affect the dish too much (not that I have previously tasted this dish though) so if you try to cut calorie or go easy, try a can or low fat sour cream/half stick of butter.

I won't call this dish necessarily cooking, coz the recipe was easy as mix all ingridient shown in picture above. Also, preheat your oven to 350F degree.

And this was the visual I got... yeah.... this is where I got REALLY lost. Still not quite sure if it's supposed to look like that but oh well it tasted good.



Now I smashed my cracker, placed it on top of the dish, poured melted butter to finish.

Then it went into the preheated oven (350F) and baked for 30min.

And this is the final visual! It served as a good 5 meals paired with other dishes. I think I might try this dish again, just to be sure (I like to give up to 3 chances ;)), but will certainly try more cream of chicken for less cream of sour cream the next time. And the cracker on the top, by the way, is what makes this dish. It doesn't affect the taste or anything but I think it gives a nice crunchy texture to this otherwise creamy dish so if you are trying out this dish, don't forget it!

Since we moved to states, this has never quite happened but when we were living in Korea, we ALWAYS had rice around. Rice is like bread there. It's just there and when it's gone, you get a new batch.

Just like old bread, there were times I just did not feel like eating the old rice and needed an excuse to get rid of them so I can cook a fresh batch.

Well, only if I knew, this recipe would've been a perfect one to use old rice (not spoiled! maybe a day or two at max) up.

Anywho, just like many of you, I no longer have cooked rice sitting around at home but what I do have is good old Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup and minute rice.

Ahh life of instant. How wonderful.

Perhaps that might be the reason why my Mother-In-Law (MIL) included this recipe for me.

Today's dish is as you already know from the title image; Sausage Rice Casserole!

This is my first official casserole dish and in fact, I only just learned what a casserole dish meant today... yet I am a food blogger..(clearing throuat)

Anywho, enough intro that was, so let's jump right into it!

WHAT YOU NEED :

Need I say more? It's chili. It's chili recipe from a Southern mom. 

HECK YES IT IS DELICIOUS!

After I made this this I actually had to look up this dish on wikipedia to better describe the dish to my Korean readers (yes, I have a Korean blog if you wish to check out), and I found out, that this dish is from Texas, not mexico somewhere. Chili is better known in Australia as Chili Con Carne, and apparently it means chilly with(con) meat(carne) in Spanish. 

Most recipes I found online used either instant chili seasoning or a ton of spices.

To my surprise, my mother-in-law's recipe only has five core ingredients

Ingredients : 

1 can Chili Beans

1 can Diced Tomatoes (missing in the picture below)

1 can Tomato Soup

1 med size Onion (Bell pepper too if you have)

1 lb Hamburger meat (ground beef)

She noted to add chili powder to taste and cumin if desired so I added 1 Tbs Chili Powder, but went without cumin since I did not have any. 

Now the fun part;
1. Brown your meat in an oiled pan. No need to drain the grease.

2. Chop up an onion and other veggie of your liking (Bell pepper highly recommended) in the meanwhile. 

3. Add all the ingredients to the pan you were browning your beef with and mix well. Also add chili powder and cumin if desired (I only added chili powder)

5. Simmer to marry flavour. I went for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. 

6.Completely optional, but I have fresh basil growing on the corner of my kitchen so I added them and they were SO GOOD with chili. I highly recommend this. If you were to add fresh ones, best to do it right before serving as an accent colour.

7. Now to serve it up, add cheddar cheese and crackers. Yum. 

No joke, I think this is the recipe I will pass down to my kids if I had any. This homemade chili was much better than the seasoning packet ones I had previously tried out and it only took 20min all together. No crockpot, no dozen of spices.

Seriously, try this out, you won't regret it.